


monument

by neyvenger (jjjat3am)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Liverpool F.C., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9503321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger
Summary: "Wish it was starting again," Robbie says, and thinks nothing of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> Yesterday, Robbie replied to a tweet about his career with ["Wish it was starting all over again"](https://twitter.com/Robbie9Fowler/status/825453597274025993) and my heart hurt badly enough to write this.
> 
> Also inspired by Rach who said: "they don't have the catharsis (or self-pity) of regret, only the knowledge that once they had all of these things that they can no longer have, and that kills me"
> 
> I hope you like this.

 

 

It goes like this -

 

Robbie wakes up that Monday morning and thinks he’s dead.

 

It’s a joke, you see:

 

‘When you get old, if you wake up in the morning without pain, you’ll be dead.’

 

He wakes up in the morning and his first instinct isn’t to reach out for his pain medication because the only ache in his body is the one that comes from being still for too long. He opens his eyes and they’re sharp as an eagle’s, highlighting cracks on his bedroom ceiling he hasn’t counted before.

 

Robbie breathes and nothing hurts, and he isn’t dead. So. What is he?

 

Not fat, for one. Smaller than average, but that’s expected. His ears are still fucking tiny. And the rest-

 

Well, he doesn’t look a day over eighteen.

  


*

 

After Robbie spends almost an hour standing in front of his bedroom mirror, he goes to the bathroom to take a leak and discovers that, yes, there’s another part of him that’s more awake than usual, and it almost makes him laugh, imagining what Macca would say.

 

Almost.

 

Macca.

 

He swallows heavily and pushes the thought to the back of his mind.

 

Robbie makes some tea, because it’s part of his morning routine, to brew a cuppa and drink it slowly, watching the Mersey drift on its way from his kitchen window. His hands shake and he tightens them on the porcelain, gets burns on his palms and drops it with a curse, shattering it on the floor.

 

It’s an old Liverpool mug, from his first apartment. Chipped, but one of his favorites.

 

He cuts his finger on a shard, and that hurts, combines with the burn, and the pain is familiar, almost reassuring, and isn’t that all the way fucked up.

 

Robbie’s halfway through sweeping and mopping when his phone rings. He freezes, watching it warily.

 

It’s one of those new smartphones, and he’s always a little afraid it’ll come alive on him, send pictures of his bloated face to the secret service, or take over his brain like in those alien movies that Macca always liked to watch.

 

Macca.

 

His name on the phone display, along with the only emoji Robbie knows how to use.

 

The poo one.

 

He lets it ring out, doesn’t breathe until it stops playing The Beatles, then exhales a sigh of relief and slumps over his broom.

 

It starts ringing again. He startles, drops the broom.

 

Macca.

 

Again.

 

He always said that if Robbie wouldn’t answer after two calls, he’d start inviting people to their funeral.

 

One time, when they were young and got really drunk, Macca told him all his plans for their funeral, from the songs to the attendees, to their mingled ashes scattered across the Anfield grass. It was maudlin, but that’s how Macca got, sometimes.

 

Robbie, ten drinks deep and drifting, asked him if he’d planned their wedding too, but Macca was already asleep, a smile curling the edges of his mouth.

 

Robbie didn’t ask again.

 

His phone stops ringing and there’s a moment of tension before he sprints across the floorboards with all the considerable speed his body now possesses, hitting redial.

 

“It’s about time, you small-eared piece of shit,” Macca’s voice is familiar and fond in his ear, and it’s like it reaches somewhere into his chest, cutting through the fist sized knot where Robbie’s heart should be. “Did you sleep in or something?”

 

“No,” Robbie says, and he knows his voice is off, he knows- “I just didn’t hear the phone ring.”

 

“You’ll need hearing aids soon, provided they even make them for your tiny ears.”

 

“I won’t!” he really won’t, “I was in the shower.”

 

“...you never shower in the mornings.”

 

Shit.

 

“I...uh…”

 

There’s a frown apparent in Macca’s voice. “Growler? Are you feeling okay?”

 

The excuse appears in front of him like the holy grail.

 

“Yeah, I’m really sick,” he coughs a few times into receiver, for emphasis, “in fact, I’m so sick I won’t be able to come meet you today. Sorry.”

 

“Well, okay,” Macca says, voice liting with surprise, “but are you sure you’re alright? Maybe you should go to a doctor or something? I read somewhere that old people had an 87% higher risk of pneumonia in the winter.”

 

“You’re older than me, you berk!”

 

“Ah, you sound healthier already.”

 

They say their goodbyes, and the phone cuts off Macca’s voice, and Robbie stares at his reflection in his kitchen window overlooking the Mersey and doesn’t know what the fuck to do next.

 

He can’t hide from Macca forever.

 

Robbie tried once, went to a vacation in the Caribbean without telling him, but the fucker sniffed him out within two days and showed up on the beach in an ugly swimsuit and a bag full of sunscreen. He never tried again.

 

So he can’t run and he can’t hide, but he also doesn’t know how to explain _this_ , the new sinews in his body, the bones that never got broken, the smooth unmarred skin of his stomach. It’s not like he’s a car, can’t say ‘oh I took it to the mechanic and it looks like it’s brand new’.

 

The car never looks like it’s brand new. Not like Robbie.

 

It’s not looking like a match he can win. Robbie’s always hated those.

 

So, he solves the problem like how he solves all his problems – he parks his butt on the couch and watches reruns of Eastenders until his brain feels sufficiently mushy.

 

The first problem comes when his stomach growls, loudly pronouncing its displeasure. Robbie can’t order takeout because he can’t risk being exposed by some overzealous takeout boy, but he also can’t cook.

 

In the end, he manages not to burn the chicken breast too much. It fills his stomach but it also leaves him feeling restless and twitchy, full of excess energy.

 

He remembers this.

 

Remembers sitting in a classroom and only thinking about the ball. Remembers his feet, tap-tap-tapping on the linoleum, the dirty look from the girl sitting in front of him, his toes twitching in his shoes like they wanted to be running.

 

His eyes stop on a ball, sitting on the top shelf of the hallway cupboards. He didn’t even buy it. It’s a promo gift, from some tournament he can’t remember.

 

He still has to stand on a chair to get it down, curses the universe for not fixing that bit too.

 

(He’s always been like this, Macca would say, a little ungrateful.)

 

The first touch of his bare foot to the plastic is nothing special. It hurts, a little bit. He likes that.

 

The second touch is a revelation, the ball rolling smoothly from the arch of his foot to the toes of the other. And, he’s off, dribbling around furniture, scoring invisible goals on the smooth finish of the walls.

 

His neighbors hate him already, what’s a few more reasons?

 

He stops, an hour later, not because he’s tired, but because he’s run out of surface and the room looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane.

 

Robbie stands in the center of the chaos, grinning, his chest heaving, his whole body thrumming with energy, and it almost feels worth it, just for this.

 

His doorbell rings.

 

Robbie whips around to stare at it, suddenly terrified. What if it’s an ex? What if it’s a crazy ax murderer? What if it’s Hughes, trying to sign him for Stoke again? What if it’s the police and they found those pictures from the eighties–

 

“Growler? Open the fucking door!”

 

It’s Macca.

 

Of course, it’s Macca. He’d been an idiot to think that he’d just let it go and leave Robbie to his own devices.

 

“I’m sick!” he yells back through the door.

 

“You don’t sound sick!”

 

“Well, I am and it’s contagious!”

 

“Is it herpes? Because I think you already gave that to me in the nineties.”

 

Robbie stares at the door blankly.

 

“It’s not fucking herpes!”

 

“Is there herpes that isn’t of the fucking kind?”

 

“I don’t have herpes!”

 

“Yes, you do, I just told you, you gave-”

 

“Macca!”

 

“Open the fucking door and I’ll stop.”

 

“No!”

 

“I’ll break down the door if I have to!” Macca must hear his disbelieving huff through the door, because he adds, “Don’t you go on about my training regime! Carra’s been giving me pointers.”

 

There’s a host of things Robbie can hear in his voice, even as muffled as it is through the door. The concern, most prominently. A small amount of fear.

 

He sighs, defeated, and unlocks the door.

 

Macca slips in through the gap like he’s afraid that Robbie might change his mind.

 

“Well, at least I know you’re not hiding a hooker in here,” he says, looking around the room.

 

Robbie frowns. “For the hundredth time,” he says, “I’ve never paid for sex.”

 

“That’s funny, I seem to remember you...holy fuck.”

 

Robbie watches as Macca’s face goes slack with shock. He knows what he sees.

 

Robbie, but his eyes clear and vibrant and green. His skin smooth, the laugh marks and sun damage erased from his face. His body, swamped in his too big clothes, ‘not ideal for an athlete,’ but good enough. Better than most.

 

He doesn’t look a day older than when Macca met him for the first time.

 

“Surgery?” Macca says, wonderingly, reaching out, then pausing, like he isn’t sure of his welcome.

 

Robbie steps closer, quietly grateful.

 

“I woke up like this,” Robbie says.

 

“Flawless,” Macca mutters under his breath, and Robbie mentally composes another complaint to Redders and his awful music taste.

 

Macca brushes his cheek with his fingers, gently, and Robbie melts into it. There hasn’t been a day between the ages 18 and 41 that Macca’s touch didn’t make him shiver with delight, with barely contained happiness.

 

“What are you going to do now?” Macca asks, brushing the ridge of his cheekbone, softly touching the edge of one of his ears.

 

“I don’t know,” Robbie confesses. “Hide?”

 

“Hide?” Macca snorts. “You can still play football, can’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Robbie says, slowly, and the dream rises in front of him like a wild thing, in the half remembered feeling of his boots on the grass, in the burning elation of the swishing sound of the net.

 

“There you go,” Macca says. Something seems to occur to him, and his expression shutters, like it does every time he’s about to say something dumb. He steps back, his hand falling to his side. Robbie misses it immediately. “Maybe I shouldn’t…”

 

Robbie looks at him blankly,  so he tries to explain, “You’re so young now, and I’m, well,” he gestures over his body. Robbie looks, half expecting to see that tentacles have grown on him over night. They haven’t.

 

“What,” he says flatly, because Macca is still the most awful, most beautiful person he’s ever known, and that really hasn’t changed.

 

Macca breaks out in a grin, and Robbie watches the laughter lines around his mouth deepen, thinks proudly about how many he helped put there.

 

“Right, then, stupid question.”

 

“So stupid.”

  


*

 

It goes like this –

 

Robert Bernard Fowler disappears from his apartment in Merseyside one bright Tuesday morning. Eight months later, his clothes are washed up by the river.

 

They hold a funeral.

 

Macca doesn’t attend and Jamie Carragher cries on national television.

 

There are no ashes to scatter across the Anfield grass.

  


*

 

Not that they would have allowed that anyway – it’s a health hazard only Chelsea can avoid.

  


*

  


It ends like this–

 

Twelve months later, Steve McManaman walks into Jürgen Klopp’s office.

 

“I have a player for you and you need to sign him,” he says. Klopp laughs in his face, but this isn’t unusual because he laughs at everything.

 

“Alright,” Kloppo says, “let’s see him.”

 

Robert McManaman is strawberry blonde and has the most piercing green eyes. He shakes Klopp’s hand firmly, mouth turned up in a smirk.

 

“You know,” Klopp says, “you look a lot like Robbie Fowler.”

 

Robert grins.

 

“Who?” he says. And proceeds to dribble through two lines of Liverpool players gathered for practice, scoring right through Karius’ outstretched hands.

 

Buvač has a contract ready before Klopp even stops gaping.

 

In the following few years, Robert Mcmanaman lights up the Premier league, the Liverbird snug on his chest like it’s the only place it’s ever belonged and not the other way around.

 

Macca becomes his agent and waves off any questions about their relationship with a mysterious smile, up until the Daily Mail finds the marriage certificate and implodes on itself. It’s no great loss.

 

They ask Robert if he has any regrets, signing with Liverpool when other clubs could have offered him more money and prestige.

 

Robert tilts his head to the side, green eyes flashing where they connect with someone beyond the camera.

 

“Honestly,” he says, “I’d do it all over again.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Jamie Redknapp for sure listens to Beyonce.
> 
> Chelsea has Peter Osgood's ashes buried under their penalty spot and it's still beyond me how that got approved by Health and Saftey
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://neyvenger.tumblr.com/)


End file.
